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Comment by OtherShrezzing | Hacker News Reader

On Google's earnings call - within the last couple of weeks - they explicitly stated that their stronger-than-expected growth in the quarter was due to a large unexpected increase in search revenues[0]. That's a distinct line-item from their ads business.

>Google’s core search and advertising business grew almost 10 per cent to $50.7bn in the quarter, surpassing estimates for between 8 per cent and 9 per cent.[0]

The "Google's search is garbage" paradigm is starting to get outdated, and users are returning to their search product. Their results, particularly the Gemini overview box, are (usually) useful at the moment. Their key differentiator over generative chatbots is that they have reliable & sourced results instantly in their overview. Just concise information about the thing you searched for, instantly, with links to sources.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/168e9ba3-e2ff-4c63-97a3-8d7c78802...

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This is anecdotal but here's a random thing I searched for yesterday https://i.imgur.com/XBr0D17.jpeg

> The "Google's search is garbage" paradigm is starting to get outdated

Quite the opposite. It's never been more true. I'm not saying using LLMs for search is better, but as it stands right now, SEO spammers have beat Google, since whatever you search for, the majority of results are AI slop.

Their increased revenue probably comes down to the fact that they no longer show any search results in the first screenful at all for mobile and they've worked hard to make ads indistinguishable from real results at a quick glance for the average user. And it's not like there exists a better alternative. Search in general sucks due to SEO.

Can you give an example of an everyday person search that generates a majority of AI slop?

If anything my frustration with google search comes from it being much harder to find niche technical information, because it seems google has turned the knobs hard towards "Treat search queries like they are coming from the average user, so show them what they are probably looking for over what they are actually looking for."

Basically any product comparison or review for example.

Let's try "samsung fridge review". The top results are a reddit thread, consumer reports article, Best Buy listing, Quora thread and some YouTube videos by actual humans.

Where is this slop you speak of?

> Quite the opposite. It's never been more true. I'm not saying using LLMs for search is better, but as it stands right now, SEO spammers have beat Google, since whatever you search for, the majority of results is AI slop.

It's actually sadder than that. Google appear to have realised that they make more money if they serve up ad infested scrapes of Stack Overflow rather than the original site. (And they're right, at least in the short term).

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